Forum organisation sucks! (1 Viewer)

[martyyn]

Id like to make a different suggestion about the forum structure.

What I find increasingly frustrating is that with the growth of the forums (and the growth of my personal life) I find I have less and less time with which to keep up with everything.

In particular are the threads on skins and bug fixes that have dozens of pages and just hundreds of posts. Sitting and reading through all them is almost impossible and Ive seen a couple of times people respond with 'why do I answer the same old questions'. Its because you cant see the woods for the trees !

My suggestion would be that for those people who simply wish to say 'thanks' there would be a button that registers their gratitude and puts their username in a list at the top of the thread and nothing more.

I think positive feedback is very very important but having it clog up threads defeats the purpose IMO.

Ive seen it work on other forums and it keeps the threads to a very reasonable level. Whereas at the moment Im starting to lose interest because I just dont have the time. Im also less inclined to post saying thank-you because I know its just going to add to the problem.

Just thinking out loud, but Id be interested to hear other peoples thoughts.

Cheers
Martyn

 

[Inker]

I like that idea martyyn!

The problem was partially solved for some plugins with the "hot plugins" section (which has since been moved again????). But for skins it is indeed very hard to read through 50 pages.

 

[The_Stig]

I like that idea too. I suggest furthermore to gently "force" the starters of these threads to update the first post, so that the newest information would be visible directly at the start post. Maybe thats possible?

 

[zag2me]

Vbullitin has a "thanks" button plugin, I have seen it on other forums, maybe that could be included so that you dont get loads of posts just saying thankyou and taking up space.

 

[Bram]

I totaly agree to that. I know from other forums that works well.

 

[high]

My suggestion would be that for those people who simply wish to say 'thanks' there would be a button that registers their gratitude and puts their username in a list at the top of the thread and nothing more.

Thanks for your suggestion, a 'Thanks!'-button is added for threadstarters.

 

[Ralph]

Vbullitin has a "thanks" button plugin, ...so that you dont get loads of posts just saying thankyou and taking up space.

What is this all about???
...dont get loads of posts just saying thankyou..
A Forum is not only for requests, problems and bugs, though we have a lot of that, here.
It also makes it's charme helping each other, speaking with each other,
not just about problems and what's not working, but also about positive things.
And it's a very special moment for everyone who gets a personal "Thank You" and other kind words.
I think the "Thank You" phrase takes the minority of all posts here and we should
take that time and webspace to let people write kind and gentle words whenever they like,
and not reduce this "Thank You" to a One-Click-Solution!

I also wonder about the new entries under my avatar.
What is this for? Finding the best thank-you-clicking-member???

Just my first thoughts, when reading this...

Regards
Ralph

 

[CHli]

I agree with you Ralph, sad that a thank you is now considered as a simple click

 

[backslash]

Sorry for the title, but the organisation of the forums is really bad. It was much better before the changes.

Specifically there are far to many sub sections to check each day.

The most annoying thing is the plugins and "hot plugins" split. Who wants to click 3 times just to find a hot plugin? It just makes them harder to find. All plugins should have their own thread in the plugins section, and keep at the top if they are popular and people post in the threads.

Also the sticky threads need a refresh, lots of old material especially in the developers forum that is out of date and needs deleting.

The structure is kinda ok but what really sucks is the forum search function! It's really hard to find relevant threads/post according to the keyword. Iam using different forum systems on different communities but MP's forum has the worst search funtionality of them all in my opinion.

backslash

 

[Bram]

That's true. The phpBB forum search engine is even worse. That's why I've added the Google Custom Search to my forums.
http://google.com/coop/cse/

Example: http://www.kraak-forum.nl (click on "zoeken" in the right upper corner, the implementation is not standard. That's just how I've implemented it.)

If this forum is being indexed by google regularly this is a fantastic option.